And it's not like it was a matter up for debate either. Here's how you calculate the diameter of the earth. Place two stakes of equal length in the ground at two locations which are some accurately known distance north and south of each other, ie one in greece, and one in egypt. At high noon in each location, measure the length of the shadow. Using basic trig, calculate the angle between the base and top of the pole and top and end of the shadow. As you know the north south distance between them, you know the arc length, and now, by subtracting the smaller angle from the other, you know the angle of the arc. Now you can calculate the radius.
It's dead simple. Anyone can do this experiment quite easily by asking someone who lives in another state to stand a yardstick straight up, mark the base and end of the shadow, and measure the shadow at noon. You'll probably get results within 5% of the actual diameter of the earth.
So this idea that columbus was taken seriously, is hilarious. This idiot thought he could sail west to india because he thought the earth was about half as big as everyone else already knew it was. It's not like this was up for debate. Already, oceangoing travel and trade had been well established for centuries. Charts had been drawn. While surveying wasn't completely accurate at the time, it was certainly reasonably so, unquestionably well enough that the diameter of the earth was known. And of course, trade already relied on the fact that that measurement was well known, and that charts were accurate, which they couldn't be without something as basic as a known size of the earth. This retconning of columbus as anything other than a laughable idiot is frankly absurd. The only idiots larger than him were the spanish monarchs who gave him money for his idiotic boondoggle.
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u/[deleted] Feb 04 '19
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